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Agenda 21's terror Down Under

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, high priest of climate skepticism, advised Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, wrote leaders for the Yorkshire Post, was editor of the Catholic paper The Universe, managing editor of the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, assistant editor of Today, and consulting editor of the Evening Standard. He invented the million-selling "Eternity Puzzles," "Sudoku X" and a promising treatment for infections. See the Science & Public Policy Institute.

MOUNT LOFTY, South Australia – Farming is Australia’s biggest business. Or, rather, it was. The number of farms in this vast, desert continent is down by 100,000. Why? One reason is Agenda 21, the U.N.’s sinister plan for global domination via environmental over-regulation.

This week, on my three-month speaking tour of Australia, I am staying at a farm high in the beautiful hills above Adelaide in South Australia. My kind host – who has begged me not to name him for fear of reprisals – is a visibly frightened man. So are many of the farmers hereabout.

The reason for their fear for their future is the gruesome Natural Resources Management Board of South Australia, a universally hated bureaucracy that is actively putting the U.N.’s anti-irrigation, anti-pesticide, anti-farming, anti-business, anti-environment, anti-population, anti-human, anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-everything Agenda 21 program into ruthless effect.

Yesterday, I met a local farmer with a shocking story. For weeks his farm was spied upon by bureaucrats with binoculars hiding behind a shed. Then, one night at 11 p.m., they pounced. Three of them drove at him in a pickup truck with a massive roo-bar on the front. He ended up hanging from the bar, with an agonizingly bruised leg, spent time in the hospital with post-traumatic stress and remains in pain to this day.

The bureaucrats got to the police before he did, for he was ill. They alleged he had driven at them and not the other way about. Wisely, they did not pursue that allegation. Instead, they took him to court for unlawfully extracting water from a nearby creek.

In his absence – he was unfit to attend as a result of what was done to him – the local criminal court, taking no account of his mental condition, savagely fined him $18,000 for allegedly having used water from the creek near his property to irrigate his crop of lucerne on the day of the bureaucrats’ raid.

Fortunately, he neither paid the fine nor did the alternative 320 hours’ community service. Though the cruel judges had inflicted what – even if an offense had been committed – was a flagrantly disproportionate fine, not everyone in the civil service is heartless. He ended up unpunished.

Just as well: for he had committed no offense. True, he had extracted water from the creek on the day of the alleged offense, but he had used it to fill his cattle troughs. I have seen a document proving beyond doubt that he was fully entitled to extract water from the creek for his household and for his cattle. The court is soon to be asked to set aside its judgment and expunge the victim’s record of the offense.

The farmer who wanted to water his cows is by no means the only victim of the regime of terror here in South Australia. Another farmer I have met told me the bureaucrats had used satellite photos to estimate the size of his reservoir. When professionally surveyed on the ground, its capacity was found to be 6.1 million liters, but the bureaucrats’ Mickey Mouse method had incorrectly overestimated it at 10.2 million liters – a shocking error.

All reservoirs above a threshold capacity are cripplingly regulated. As a result of this incident, farmers all over South Australia with reservoirs the bureaucrats say are just over the threshold for regulation are demanding surveys to check the bureaucrats’ math.

Another farmer who cleared silt from a river on his land to assist the river flow was fined a staggeringly disproportionate $35,000 by the vicious local judges.

Yet another farmer was told a water meter had to be fitted to his borehole, so he could be charged for using his own water, even though water used for his household and his cattle is supposed to be exempt from any charges.

Another farmer was told: “We can fine you for shifting a rock.” Bullying notices along the roadsides here tell passersby that they must not touch or disturb soil or vegetation at all.

Farmers all across South Australia are being forced to plant thorny weeds all along the road verges. The bureaucrats’ reason: “Some clusters of acacia paradoxa will protect the river banks from kangaroo intrusion.” The kangaroos, an indigenous species, were here long before the bureaucrats. But now, in the name of saving the natural environment, the natural environment is to be destroyed.

Planting acacia paradoxa is a bad idea. Spiny acacia is also known as the kerosene bush. As its name implies, it catches fire very easily. The bushes will help bush fires to spread. One farmer put it to me bluntly: “That’s what the Agenda 21 maniacs want. They want to burn us out and drive us off our land forever.”

He is right. I have spoken to a sheep farmer whom the Board menaced with massive fines because, they said, he had more stock on his land than the permitted maximum. It turned out that the bureaucrats had double-counted his lambs. In any event, that farmer had plenty of feed for his stock, which were in magnificent condition.

The Board ordered the farmer to reduce his stockholding. He complained to a senior administrator. Eventually the Board climbed down – but without any apology. Instead, an official told him the Board would arrange a forced sale of his farm.

No doubt Ban Ki-Moon is delighted that his willing agents at the Natural Resources Management Board are making the corrupt U.N. even more hated than it already is. Time to arrange a forced sale of the U.N.’s lavish New York HQ and send its pampered officials to do some real work on Australian farms. Let us convert the U.N. building to fancy apartments for the rich and famous. I shall take the penthouse.

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